I have been saying things like this: Aspects of the adoration of Cajuns to which I object include the ubiquity of the fleur-de-lys and the nostalgia for empire, along with the desire to parlay that into becoming kings in a new, corporate empire. If you want credit for being a poor peasant and you’ve decided … More The one defeated
Long ago, in another coincé job, two friends had things to say. One: that every academic must have a secret life, some hobby nobody else from campus participates in, a fancy car nobody from campus rides in. Two: that I was stressed out from campus because I wasn’t hiding enough. At the time, I did … More Managing
The Reeducator said this and also said I was too intellectual, too “thinking.” (Thinking was bad, because it involved reason, which to him meant false reason and rationalization, and of course he was very anti-intellectual.) I didn’t understand what he meant, because I have deep feelings and also a lot of emotions; I was insulted … More “Feel your feelings”
Someone I know, a Cajun, said yesterday that they had “deep grief” over the same kinds of issues in this culture that I complain of. In their case, they cannot see their family because of it, and they grieve this and the situation. So that is what I have, in part, deep grief. What other … More “Deep grief”
Now we are getting somewhere. It was in many ways literally true that I had to let that department chair abuse me, which he did in the name of the Cajuns, to survive. And I needed to survive. I gave up a great deal for it, and the whole experience reproduced earlier trauma, and I … More Still more on the latest episode of disgust
I don’t ever want to feel as I did [yesterday] again. Or for the past 27 years living in Lafayette. Therefore, this is what I have to say to the Cajuns of that Cajun Renaissance: yes, I have a PhD, and if you say so, yes, it’s better than yours. Yes, I’ve got broader academic … More Epistle to the Cajuns
Right, in a broader sense the revolution I’m in was lost 50 years ago and I know it. But my not wanting to be defeated is this: I don’t feel like quitting the university without another university job, it’s just that in my particular department religious adoration of the suffering Cajuns is required at all … More Something I said to a friend
Be on time, not in a rush. Put self first. Reach to the outside and to students, everyone else to the background. Two weeks in California in December. People don’t get to invade me and if they do, I get to stop them at the first opportunity. Other people may need to be more flexible, … More New Year
“After this year it seems pretty clear that universities have no backbone, the enlightenment values you and I were raised with have been abandoned (Post-modernists share a lot of the blame but that is a different essay). The process began with civil rights and anti-war movements when the ruling class decided the civics, history, and … More From friends
I always have liked Benjamin and actually, I would learn German to read him in the original, and maybe Goethe. The true picture of the past whizzes by. Only as a picture, which flashes its final farewell in the moment of its recognizability, is the past to be held fast. “The truth will not run … More Epigraphs for my novel, and revelations
